


Cinders, Ashes, Dust

by fypical



Series: The Vamptaire Chronicles [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M, M/M, Multi, Multiple Pairings, vamptaire
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 06:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fypical/pseuds/fypical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being dead is not nearly as bad as all that; at least, that is what Grantaire tells himself. The blood drinking gets in the way sometimes, however. Or, in which Grantaire is the undead, but it's all right most days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. what! is it in our nineteenth century that vampires exist?

**Author's Note:**

> This is something of an offshoot of a graphic series I am in the process of, wherein the characters of Les Misérables are cast as supernatural and mythological creatures. Vampire Grantaire has sort of become its own entity, and with the encouragement from astillsoftershade I've begun building it as its own series. The graphic series can be found on tumblr under the tag 'les supernaturables', and I give my many thanks to Tumblr users astillsoftershade, cuddlefeyrac, kavkakat, and combeferrerocher for their interest in the series and help in fleshing out/writing what is shaping up to be something of a behemoth. Title is from "The Lamia", by John Keats. Chapter title is bastardized from Voltaire's scathing denial of the existence of vampires.

Being dead is not nearly as horrible as all that.

At least, that’s what Grantaire has been telling himself and really, there isn’t much to be complained about. It gets tedious on occasion, of course, as anything repeated for eternity would, but given that most dead people are rotting in the ground or in the water (or on pikes on the London Bridge, though it’s been awhile since Grantaire’s been in London, perhaps they’re more civil now), he has to admit that he has it alright compared to them.

The blood-drinking gets in the way sometimes, though.

It isn’t so much that it hinders his continued existence – he knows very well how to find people that are more than happy to play the role of the swooning victim, be it for money or the simple thrill of it.

(He doesn’t quite understand the latter, it wasn’t a thrill to have _his_ throat torn out, but he supposes it’s perhaps different when one is expecting to become a meal.)

And, anyway, it’s not as if he kills them. He used to, when it was easier to kill people than to leave a trail of people who’d tell stories about the charming young man who took them for a drink and then drank them, and when there were swathes of humans that nobody kept track of. He asks now, how far they want it to go (and some do want to die, but he sends them to someone else, he isn’t going to have “suicide assistant” on his long list of transgressions), because he’ll be damned—

Well. He already is damned, if he’s to believe what the Church has to say about it all, but he certainly won’t be taking lives to sustain his own anymore. The French elite don’t pay much attention to the destitute, but Grantaire knows from experience that there is always someone, these days, to come looking for the poor and would-be forgotten people of Paris. And they generally have sharp objects that they expect to work. It really is just more trouble than it’s worth. It’s a relief, honestly. Killing people is exhausting on a physical and emotional level, and Grantaire’s been around long enough that he can’t afford to be more exhausted than the base exhaustion that he imagines probably comes with being elderly. It certainly comes with being immortal, and he isn’t certain if everything beginning to blur together is caused by it or is causing it. On some level he suspects it’s simply a symptom of being older than the city which he currently calls his home.

Grantaire likes Paris; it feels less dramatic than London – though God knows why that is, London hasn’t had nearly the turmoil Paris can claim, but Paris has fewer self-important lords and ladies pretending to suffer, Grantaire thinks. It’s certainly less tumultuous than Rome, but then, nearly every city is – it isn’t easy to beat Nero and Caesar at political scandal, not to mention having the death of Christ attributed to Rome.  Paris has a long way to go before it becomes quite as infamous as that; not for lack of trying on her part, it seems increasingly like the city is trying to build its own scandalous reputation. He supposes he shouldn’t be against that; even thinking about the impossibility of political change is liable to bring Enjolras swooping down upon him like some sort of clairvoyant Valkyrie – which is not an entirely inaccurate description, Grantaire finds. It matters not that Grantaire spends much of his time hidden in a dark corner of the catacombs (his rooms near the Café Musain are useful to him, but not when the sun is shining), he knows that if he thinks too loudly about how Enjolras’s prophesied revolution will fail he will be found out and sternly reprimanded. The truth of it is, he doesn’t much mind being insulted and belittled in front of his friends; he should, perhaps, but Enjolras hissing at him to go back to his drink is better than Enjolras ignoring him entirely. It’s more than a little pathetic, Grantaire knows, and he wants very much to care enough to stop and perhaps try to make himself seem slightly more respectable – he just can’t. Enjolras’s hopes for the future aren’t exactly new ideas, revolutionary though they may be, and Grantaire already knows how it will end: like every other revolution, in blood and desperation. But he makes them sound nice, and he’s so fucking fervent about his beliefs that he sparks something like nostalgia in Grantaire; he does his best not to care about a revolution he knows will fail (if it even ever happens), but Enjolras is something else entirely. Grantaire heard once that someone – not anyone of their group, they all know better – had called him Apollo once, in the middle of one of Enjolras’s more public speeches, and while Grantaire can appreciate the physical similarities, it does Enjolras a disservice to compare him to Apollo.

Besides which, Enjolras sulked for three days afterward, and Grantaire – much as he does adore Enjolras – is of the staunch opinion that nobody need be subjected to Enjolras sulking.  He’d even kept relatively quiet during the meetings; Enjolras snapping at him is one thing, but Enjolras goes quickly from incensed to frighteningly cold when he’s got something other than the injustices against the people of France bothering him, and that sort of attention is in fact not what Grantaire enjoys. Courfeyrac had commented in passing that Enjolras seemed more on edge when not being challenged, but Grantaire is far too selfish to sacrifice himself for something that small, especially when he knows he’d get no thanks for it (from Enjolras or likely anyone else, if his friends’ reactions to their often truly spectacular arguments are any indication).  So he’d stayed quiet, letting Enjolras stew until Bahorel had suggested staging a protest outside a convent, and then had bought himself another bottle of cheap wine while Enjolras fixed Bahorel with a colder stare than Grantaire had seen in some time.

He doesn’t call Enjolras by the gods’ names, and wouldn’t anyway, because the gods that Grantaire knows are cruel and callous and use humans as pawns in their games; some may think that Enjolras is those things, and he has his moments, but those he considers friends and those who would follow him in treason against France’s government are far more than pawns. And his revolution is far more than a game. Personally, Grantaire suspects that even the moments of callousness and cruelty aren’t the truth of Enjolras; he knows from experience that it is easier to seem not to care than to show just how much one cares, and Enjolras is so passionate about everything that it is impossible to imagine him not caring about the people fighting his fight. He has his flaws, of course, and Grantaire is not blind to them – trying so hard to avoid endangering his friends by how much he cares for them leaves Enjolras in a place of ingratitude much of the time, and he’s more than a little naïve. Not that Grantaire is incapable of appreciating calls to action (or violence, he’s heard some good ones in his time), but he lived through the first Revolution, and Enjolras does seem to ignore quite a lot about it – and Grantaire knows it isn’t for lack of knowledge, but because he believes that the intent was good and it was merely not the right time.

Robespierre was a bastard, in any case, and each time Enjolras extols the Jacobins Grantaire is happy to side with Combeferre against him; at least the Girondists had some sense about it all. Grantaire had left France in the middle of the Revolution – when the streets are gorged with blood, one does not want to tempt oneself, and it was easy to flee to England, where most of its people were rigidly against the idea of any silly Revolution. He has to admit that it is one of the few things he likes about the English – they are mostly content in their lot, unless they are Catholic, which means far less bloodshed and politics to be dragged into.

Although its budding women’s movement was and still is compelling, even if Wollstonecraft’s daughter seems to be more interested in history and horror than beating men about the head with radical ideas (Grantaire personally prefers Wollstonecraft’s methods, simply for the sake of straightforwardness, although Frankenstein did make for an interesting read).

In any case, Paris is much easier to live in (and also not founded by Rome, which matters more than one would think, to Grantaire at least), despite its politics and people; the Romantics of London fascinate themselves with stories from the eastern countries, told around candlelight, and while that’s all well and good for humans, it is a considerable burden to be both a citizen and an old wives’ tale. The Romantics of Paris are, it seems, less fanatical about supernatural creatures and the undead, and more interested in what death itself has to offer. It does make for a decent compromise, finding someone who wants to see into the void (as it were) and has few qualms about intimacy with strangers. For all those Grantaire knows of, believing in the undead must seem rather like believing in the National Guard: why bother? They infest the city either way, it does just as well to stop believing in them and start treating them as part of the scenery.

It certainly makes for less fantastical stories about vampires roaming the darkened streets of whatever city Grantaire happens to choose to inhabit; the downside of not killing one’s food is that they, if they so choose, can tell all their friends of the experience. It isn’t something Grantaire encourages, for obvious reasons.

Not that he’s the only one of his kind in Paris; going to a city where the main concerns are politics is not a terribly original idea on his part, and while Paris has her _gamins_ , Grantaire has collected his own version of a childrens’ gang. Not that they’re children in the traditional sense – some of them look to be older than he is, but for what they are, they are barely out of infancy. He hadn’t collected them entirely willingly; that is, he had never planned on having anyone who was dependent upon him. But he has enough sense to know that even he is better than the group of criminals who had been using them as contracted killers beforehand. At least they get to eat, with him, instead of being so desperately hungry that they’d do anything demanded of them. He’d run across a pack of them on his way back from the Café Musain; the wretches had been so starved that he’d nearly been set upon (not that it would do much, beyond making them ill). He still doesn’t know whether they’re missed by their former employers, though given that they only were able to sustain themselves if they did as they were told, he can’t imagine they miss _being_ employed very much.

They are an odd little group, though, and it is rather like having twelve overgrown children trailing after him; and Grantaire doesn’t mind children, not really, but most children gorge themselves on sweets, not humans. They’ve been useful on more than one occasion, despite their still-lingering desperation (or perhaps because of it, because they think he’d starve them too, which is frankly insulting), and they tend to bring him…gifts, for lack of a better term. And he appreciates them, for the most part. They’re not unintelligent and they know at least that it’s easier to pick someone who already has no sense of the world, perhaps from one of Paris’s woefully few opium dens (and Grantaire sincerely hopes the entrepreneur who brought them to Paris has a place reserved for them in Heaven, purely for selfish reasons), or someone who seems as though they might be interested in being someone’s dinner for the evening.

Most of them scream at the sight of the skulls, though, which is odd because it tends to be in the middle of Grantaire explaining why exactly they were dragged into the catacombs and, anyway, they’re only skulls. It isn’t as if _they_ pose any threat. Sometimes whomever-it-may-be flat out refuses – Grantaire doesn’t blame them, he does keep meaning to come up with a lecture on interpersonal etiquette (and perhaps why kidnapping is wrong, as well) – and in such cases go home safe and with payment for their silence.

It really isn’t so bad, and nobody’s started any rumours or stories of the undead prowling the city, so Grantaire thinks overall it’s a job well done and that it’s as simple as asking someone if they’re quite alright with being a meal, rather than just latching on and having a go.

Keeping it a secret isn’t so difficult, either, and although Jehan knows (how he guessed Grantaire will never understand, but Jehan’s perceptive abilities outrank those of everyone else), nobody else in their core group is aware. Which is probably for the best at the very least to avoid Combeferre interrogating him (Grantaire admires Combeferre quite a lot, but he does fear that Combeferre’s thirst for knowledge will one day lead him to Grantaire’s door).

Although keeping it a secret may become infinitely more difficult when three of Grantaire’s small gang appear in his rooms looking pleased with themselves and depositing a heap of red jacket and golden hair upon the floor. To his credit, Grantaire manages about two minutes of polite if curt conversation with the three before shooing them out and properly panicking about the fact that the first thing in centuries that he’s believed in is currently lying, on the floor, in the catacombs with him.

He is still panicking when he glances down to find that Enjolras’s eyes are open and staring at him.


	2. dense, rippling, but transparent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took so horribly long and is so very short, I apologize! Once more, many thanks to tumblr users thebrightstone, combeferrerocher, cuddlefeyrac, and kavkakat for keeping me inspired. Title is from John Keats's "Lamia". Chapter title is from JS Le Fanu's "Carmilla".

Enjolras does his best to avoid drinking. He barely sleeps and has been told that he seems drunk after around the third day without rest; by that point he could hardly see straight and certainly couldn’t walk straight. It isn’t an experience he is hasty to waste money on, and he can easily deal with lack of sleep simply by sleeping. From what he’s seen of Bahorel and Grantaire after their nights out, it seems rather more complicated and unpleasant to recover from excessive drinking.

Besides, he would rather destroy himself in a semi-productive manner, and at least he’s able to get things done up until a certain point in his sleep deprivation (or at least until Combeferre snaps at him to get some rest). Enjolras is aware that some would deem him foolish for wanting to destroy himself at all, but he is also aware that were he to die for his cause (even if only while planning it), it will garner the attention it deserves. It is hardly that he wishes for death; but he recognizes not only its necessity as part of life but also its use as a political tool.

Perhaps it is why he risks his life so often by venturing into Paris’s darker corners during hours wherein he could shout for help all he liked and all that would happen would be the addition of a few more assailants. It is not a comforting thought – nor is it one Enjolras wants associated with him by the general public, or even by his friends – but it does hold some logic.

To him, at least. He knows Combeferre would no doubt object loudly to the idea that self-destruction and risk of safety could ever be logical, especially in the face of such a daunting task as reforming a country, but then Combeferre is Enjolras’s friend primarily because they are able to disagree on certain aspects of the revolt without being constantly at one another’s throats. One of these things is most certainly Enjolras’s individual health, a subject for which Combeferre and Courfeyrac both have an unending supply of opinions and advice that they seem more than happy to heap upon Enjolras (in truth, he feels that if he were to follow every one of their advisements, he would in the end be more unhealthy than when he began).

It is easier to think, outside of the confines of his rooms; and besides which, it is often oppressively dark at the times when Enjolras is most consumed by thoughts and the need to plan. It’s much easier to leave his apartment and wander the streets until an idea hits him than to sit up alone in his room and hope that he is able to come up with enough of a plan to allow him to get enough sleep to function the next day.

(He may hold sleep to be more of a luxury than a necessity, but making speeches is hell when he hasn’t enough energy to string a sentence together. He is only human, despite so many jibes to the contrary.)

It is in one of these self-possessed fits of intellectualism and the almost compulsive need to pace whilst thinking that Enjolras finds himself in a part of the city he does not know well. It is an odd thing, to find such a place, since Paris is so very much his city (just as France is his country and its people are his people), but Enjolras supposes it was inevitable that he would be surprised by what he now calls his home. It seems no less dangerous than any other part of the city, though it certainly has its share of people who would no doubt be deemed suspicious by law enforcements. Given that Enjolras has already been deemed such, it hardly bothers him. There are cafés and taverns open still, so it cannot be as late as Enjolras had initially thought (or perhaps this arrondissement is awake later than most). There are, as he would no doubt be told later by Combeferre, many reasons that he should not go into the cafes and taverns whose lights are still on; the main one being that he barely knows this part of the city, and certainly does not know it well enough to predict what sort of people would frequent its streets (aside from him).

But it isn’t as though Enjolras has ever been good at taking advice that would ensure his own safety – he is after all planning a rebellion against the Emperor (and any sort of undemocratic system of governing, in all honesty) – and he is tiring of the pitch darkness that comes in a neighbourhood too impoverished or violent to have their few streetlamps survive.

The café he enters is dingy, dark, and altogether menacing – not unlike the Corinth, in fact, which is more than a little comforting. He finds himself a corner and orders the strongest coffee they have, a small but intimidatingly dark Turkish variety; it’s more bitter than usual, but it is hardly as though the café is one of the higher end ones and is thus mostly unsurprising. It being late, and Enjolras being invested in staying awake long enough to get back to his quarters, he finishes the cup quickly and has three more.

It is not until he leaves the café that he is aware of the fact that the world is at an angle that is very, very wrong. He is not a fool, and is more than well aware that he has enemies, but he also is fairly certain that his enemies would not be subtle enough to slip something into his coffee (and besides, they would have to have predicted his wanderings into this part of the city, and he cannot attribute enough foresight to them to do so – not even Combeferre knows where he is, now).

As the world seems to tilt once more, he becomes vaguely aware that he is not alone on the street he is attempting to traverse. It’s far too difficult to care about anything beyond walking in a straight line, and so he files away the instinct to run for a time when he has more control over his legs. He thinks he has nearly made it out of the arrondissement when everything tilts sharply to the left; it will take him five minutes to realize that he has stumbled and fallen, but there is something that breaks his fall and a rough voice saying something entirely unintelligible (it sounds nearly like a comfort, but Enjolras is not entirely sure it’s meant as one).

He can register movement through the haze clouding his mind, now, and it occurs to him that he is being half-dragged somewhere by whomever was following him (presumably, at least; he hadn’t been able to see their faces before everything had become a smudge, and he certainly is unable to now). He has basic movement still available to him, though judging by how much of his weight seems to be supported by his captors that too could be gone soon.

What surprises him most is that he is not frightened; in some sort of primal way, he has the urge to attempt to flee, but it is not out of fear. In its stead is a mild discomfort, combined with confusion and a perhaps unhealthy sort of curiosity. Enjolras had not considered himself to be worthy of such a thing, before. Of course, he’s known nearly since he began attempting to resist their current government that it would make him a threat and thus put him at risk, but this seems a little…dramatic, for the localized Gendarmerie, and too peaceful for the National Guard. He does not think he’s made any real enemies in the civilian population of Paris, but he supposes he could be wrong.

The haze does not lift, despite it seeming like hours before Enjolras is finally dragged below the streets – in all likelihood, it was probably mere minutes, but when one cannot see the world around them, time seems not to work as it ought to. Enjolras has lost most of the feeling in his face, he thinks, though he’s had no chance to confirm it, given that he is being hauled along by his upper arms.

The floor is, he thinks, cold and hard when he hits it; it is difficult to be certain of anything at the moment, but Enjolras is as sure as he is able to be that he is indeed on the floor and it is indeed made of some sort of stone. He also thinks he may have hit his head, but confirming this requires any feeling in the area, so he supposes he will have to wait to do so.

It is incredibly tempting to remain on the floor in a heap, without questioning his whereabouts or attempting to make some sort of escape (the latter of which would be considerably more difficult than the former, given Enjolras’s current inability to move very much at all). As such, he closes his eyes, just for a few moments, and listens to the conversation happening above him as best he can – it sounds as though he is hearing through cotton (like Odysseus, he thinks a little deliriously, although he is fairly certain these are not sirens – they are certainly not women).

When he opens his eyes, he thinks his kidnappers have left. He supposes that is a good thing, given they had kidnapped him, although he has no idea how he’ll be leaving whatever this place is without their help.

When he had fallen, he’d caught sight of an empty cot, almost like it had been carved out of the wall it stood pressed against, too hard to be comfortable.

Now he sees Grantaire.

It is something of a jarring change, and Enjolras spends far too long staring at Grantaire’s face, wondering if Grantaire will fade away into nothing (if Enjolras is hallucinating, it would be an odd thing for his mind to conjure Grantaire).

“Fuck,” Grantaire says, his face a picture of terror, and Enjolras does think this is odd, even if he is simply a hallucination, because Grantaire should be more concerned with where they both are, not with the fact that Enjolras is here and looking at him.

Instead of asking Grantaire where they are, or some other question that might be more pertinent to the situation, Enjolras pauses for a moment to arrange his mouth in the form of words (which is, all things considered, quite difficult).

“What are you?” is what he asks.

Grantaire blanches.


End file.
